


Everything Changes (for Suzie)

by Fionn_Sgeul



Series: Midnight Garden [2]
Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Torchwood
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Episode: s01e01 Everything Changes, Gen, Gwen Cooper and Gwyneth the Maid are the same person, Gwen is older and wiser and may have gone slightly off her rocker at some point, Gwen isn't human, Gwen joins Torchwood earlier, Resurrection Gauntlet, Suzie lives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-24
Updated: 2016-07-24
Packaged: 2018-07-26 11:48:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7572967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fionn_Sgeul/pseuds/Fionn_Sgeul
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The introduction of Gwen turned Suzie's world upside down.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Everything Changes (for Suzie)

**Author's Note:**

> When I started this series, I totally did not intend to save Suzie. She was going to go off her nut and commit suicide just like in canon. But as I tried to decide how to write that, I went back and watched both the episodes with her again to get a better sense of her character.
> 
> And it dawned on me that the reason Suzie did everything she did was to find a way to conquer death. And now here's Gwen turning up -- a weeks earlier than in canon -- with a much better way of conquering death than Suzie had ever dreamed of, one that comes with all kinds of awesome perks. Of course Suzie would get obsessed with that instead.
> 
> But then what happens when the Resurrection Gauntlet comes along? I collected as much information as I could find about how it works, and then worked out how that would interact with Gwen. They both manipulate energy, in their own way, so she'd be able to tell how it worked, at least externally.
> 
> So then we got this.

Gwen sat at her shiny new desk (desk! She had a desk!) and spun around in her new swivel chair. Around, around, around … swivel chairs were one of the best human inventions, she decided, watching the Hub twirl around her.

In the swirl of motion she spotted the face of Suzie Costello, watching her with fascination. Gwen put her foot down and stopped, raising an eyebrow at Suzie. Suzie looked away and bit her lip when she was caught staring. Her eyes flicked around, and Gwen followed her gaze. The two of them were alone in the Hub; Jack, Owen, and Tosh were all off doing something or other — it hadn't sounded interesting and Gwen hadn't paid much attention — and Ianto was off in the Tourist Office. Suzie's eyes came back to Gwen, and she seemed to pluck up her courage.

"Jack says you're immortal," she said. "Is that true?"

Gwen smirked to herself and leaned back to look up at the distant ceiling. "Yes and no."

Suzie frowned. "Is this how it's going to be? Are you just going to be cryptic?"

Gwen gave her a wry half-smile. "Faeries do love to be cryptic. But the lifespan of a faerie is not something easily quantified. We live as long as we will live."

Suzie tilted her head. "And what does that mean?"

"It means everyone is different and time is relative."

Suzie sighed and sat back in her chair. "Getting a straight answer out of you is going to be a nightmare, I can tell." She pulled a face at Gwen's enigmatic smile. "All right, so faeries live as long as faeries live. Will you at least tell me how old you are?"

"Three-hundred and sixteen," said Gwen promptly.

"God," muttered Suzie.

"And how old are you?" asked Gwen curiously.

"Thirty-three. Christ, you make me feel like a child…"

"Well, if it's any consolation, you make me feel like an old woman," said Gwen. Suzie smiled a bit at that, and Gwen smiled back.

"And … you can heal people," said Suzie slowly, "just by touching them."

"Well, there's a lot more to it than just touching, but yes, I can. Don't go asking me to do anything serious or complex, though; I'm not an expert. Got what you might call first aid training — I'm good with injuries, but not much beyond that."

"Right…" said Suzie, staring at Gwen as if she were some sort of marvel. A note of wonder crept into her voice. "And you can be invisible."

"Basic faerie talent."

"And you can heat things up without touching them."

"Child's play."

"And how do you keep getting in and out of this place? Can you pass through solid matter or … or teleport, or something?"

Gwen snorted. "Come on. Leave a girl some secrets." If she told them about the gaps in their security, they might be inspired to plug them, and she was enjoying the look on Jack's face whenever she popped out of nowhere.

Suzie seemed to sense Gwen's willingness to answer questions was drying up. "Just … one more thing. I've been reading — about faeries — and … is it true, that humans can turn into them?"

Gwen's gaze sharpened. She'd suspected Suzie's line of questioning would head in this direction, and now that it had … she knew the look in Suzie's eye. Gwen had seen it a dozen times before. It was the look of someone who feared death, who felt it looming over them like a dark shadow, and now thought that maybe, just maybe, they had found a way to escape it. Salvation. Hope.

These people were dangerous. Hope and fear made a deadly cocktail.

"Sometimes," said Gwen slowly, "for some people. It seems to be a genetic predisposition."

"How do you know if you've got it?" asked Suzie breathlessly.

Very slowly, Gwen turned to face her fully. "Do you want to turn into a monster, Suzie Costello?"

Suzie jerked back and blinked. "No, but … you're not a monster."

"Aren't I?" Gwen stared her down. "I certainly can be, if I'm angry enough. And I'm considered sweet-tempered by my own folk." Her tone went hard. "We're dangerous, Suzie. We're dangerous like nuclear war. Press that button, let yourself go, and people die. And not always the people you aimed at."

Her voice softened. "And you'd be the only one who lived on and on. All the mortals around you would wither and die, and you'd have to watch it. And don't tell me you'd keep yourself from getting attached; you can't. We've all tried.

"It takes a special kind of strength to live as one of us and not turn into something dark and terrible. I want you to think very carefully about whether you have it before you try to find out if you have the gene."

Gwen stood, turned away, and vanished without another word, leaving Suzie to her thoughts.

***

Suzie stared at the strange metal gauntlet Torchwood had pulled out of the Bay last week. She squeezed her hand into it and felt the funny tingling run up her arm. She was supposed to be figuring out what it did, but her mind kept drifting off to Torchwood's newest member.

Gwen Cooper was impossible. She was ancient, wild, dangerous, powerful, and _happy_. You could see it in the way she moved — in the way she hummed and sang to herself, then danced a little twirl just because she felt like it. She played jokes and laughed, bounded around wherever she wished, and talked about how much fun the world was. She popped out of nowhere with her hair all windblown and told you what a beautiful sunrise she'd seen, or how gorgeous the stars were tonight. And if you didn't show enough appreciation, she'd drag you out to see them too.

Looking up the stars with Gwen, at the great expanse and heady infinity of it all, had filled Suzie with a sense of joyful wonder that she hadn't felt in years.

And then Gwen had asked her, "When was the last time you climbed a tree?"

They'd run off to the nearest park and spent hours climbing trees, hiding in the branches from passersby and giggling. Gwen had to stop Suzie from falling twice. It had been like being a kid again, only Suzie wasn't sure she'd ever had that much fun as a kid.

And then they'd watched the stars some more, lying in the grass of the park, and Suzie had told Gwen how much she wished she could go out there and touch them, see them up close.

"All we get down here is the filth," she complained. "The Weevils and bollocks and shit. But there must be better stuff out there … brilliant stuff … beautiful stuff. Just … they don't come here." She lowered her voice darkly. "This planet's so dirty — that's all we get: the shit."

Gwen snorted. "You've been living in cities too long, if you think that. When was the last time you climbed a mountain? When was the last time you saw a great stag standing in the sunlight? Or watched the waves and spray of a big storm pounding on the beach?"

Gwen could paint such beautiful pictures with just words… "Don't get time, with this job," mumbled Suzie.

"So make time. Take a few days off. Cardiff doesn't have a disaster every day; they can spare you. And what about this?" She waved her hand at the trees, the sky, the grass, the lights of the city beyond them. "Isn't this beautiful?"

Suzie thought of the drug addicts probably lurking in the trees somewhere, of spent needles and trash and dog shit. But she couldn't see any of that right now. For all she knew, it might not be there at all. "It is," she admitted, and felt happy. 

And now she sat at her desk, staring at an alien glove, and thinking about Gwen. 

Suzie wanted to be like her. Her joy, her power, her ability to fight back, and most of all her _certainty_. Gwen had survived for centuries and was perfectly confident that she'd survive for centuries more. That kind of security was what Suzie had wanted as long as she could remember.

The world had seemed dark and hopeless to Suzie for a long time. But things felt different now. Maybe, just maybe, her dark, hopeless world was actually a tunnel, and she'd just caught her first glimpse of the light at the end of it. Maybe, just maybe, if she had the gene…

But could she be a faerie without turning into a monster? Suzie thought she was strong; she'd survived on her own for most of her life, starting a lot younger than anyone should have to. But Gwen had talked about a different kind of strength … instead of holding yourself together, holding yourself in check. And who could you really trust with a nuclear bomb?

A shiver ran up Suzie's spine, and she looked away. Her eyes fell on a dead bug on the floor by her desk. She had the sudden urge to poke it, see what kind it was.

Not really wanting to touch a dead bug, she reached out with the hand in the gauntlet. She tipped the bug over so she could see its back. 

It twitched. The bug, which had very definitely been curled up into a little dead ball, scrambled to its six little feet. Before Suzie's astonished eyes, it scuttled around for more than a minute before rolling dead on its back again.

***

"Hey, Gwen!" Jack called up into the higher reaches of the Hub. "You want to come and see this!"

Suzie caught a flicker of motion up in the darkness. The shadowy figure of Gwen appeared on a catwalk. And then, of course, instead of _walking_ down like a _normal person_ , she placed a foot on the railing and leapt.

Suzie made a strangled, aborted noise in her throat as she watched Gwen glide down like gravity was a thing that happened to other people. Gwen landed smoothly and strode over to them, smirking slightly at the way Tosh was gaping at her.

"If you're done with your flashy entrance," drawled Jack, unfazed as usual, "Suzie has something to show us."

Suzie laid the dead rat on the examination table in the med bay and twisted her hand a little more comfortably into the glove. Her insides were jumping, partly out of nervousness as to whether she could get this to work again in front of everyone, and partly because _she was doing it again, and it felt good_. She gently ran a metal finger down the rat's back and took it by the tail.

She felt the spark, the heady rush of energy. A cold tingling ran down her arm, and the rat jerked to life, little nose and whiskers twitching.

Gwen reared back, letting out a hiss like a cat. Everyone stared at her. She was staring at the rat, the glove, up Suzie's arm, eyes wide.

"Gwen?" asked Jack.

"What is it?" asked Suzie.

Gwen transferred her stare to Suzie's face. "Can't you feel it? Can't you feel what's it's doing to you?"

A chill ran up Suzie's spine as she clamped the glove around the resurrected rat to keep it from scurrying off. "What? What's it doing?"

"It's drawing off you. It's using _your_ energy to sustain the rat. I can see it, running right down your arm and through the glove."

"Can we get a reading on that?" Jack asked Owen quickly.

"We can try," Owen answered, darting to the computer.

"You've tried this before?" Gwen asked Suzie, now watching the rat writhe with horrified fascination.

"A few times — on bugs and a mouse. It didn't seem to do me any harm."

"Well, no, those creatures are tiny. It wouldn't take much to keep them going. You could probably keep that rat going for hours, maybe days before you noticed the drain."

"So what can you tell us about how this thing works?" asked Jack.

Gwen edged closer and leaned in, wearing an expression of great distaste. She reached out, but stopped about six inches short of touching the rat or the glove. She waved her fingers in the air as if feeling it. "What happens after you stop touching them?" she asked Suzie.

"They don't last long — maybe a few minutes, and then they're dead again."

Gwen nodded as if that made sense. "The glove works by overloading the corpse with energy," she announced. "Think of it as like charging a battery. The body is so supercharged that it can function even through the damage of whatever caused death, and the damage that accumulates after death. But that charge doesn't last long."

"And a bigger creature would need more energy?" asked Jack. Gwen nodded. 

"What if you tried to use it on a person?" asked Suzie, watching the rat try to bite the metal glove.

Gwen gave her a hard look. "You wouldn't have enough spare energy to sustain a human for more than a minute or two. If you tried to use it longer than that … you'd do yourself harm. But more than that I can't say; I can't tell how this thing really works." She turned baffled eyes on it. "I've never seen anything like it. It's almost like it has a mind of its own…"

"That's what I felt, too," said Suzie eagerly, pleased that she was not, in fact, losing her mind. "I felt like I had to negotiate with it when I put it on, like it had to allow me access."

Gwen's frown darkened. "I don't trust it. I'd feel better if you took it off."

Suzie hesitated. As she did, her grip slackened, and the rat wriggled free. It made a break for the edge of the table. Gwen's hand shot out, sparking. _Crack!_ They all jumped. The rat was left in a little smoking heap.

"You killed it," said Suzie quietly. True, she'd killed it herself after catching it in a trap, but that had just been so she could bring it back…

"It was already dead," said Gwen flatly. "No point in prolonging it." She turned away.

"You all might want to come at look at this," said Owen. "We've got readings all right."

They all gathered to look, Suzie carefully removing the glove and holding it. The screen showed Suzie holding the rat in black and white, but there was one streak of colour. A stream of white-green light wrapped Suzie's arm, starting at her heart and ending at the rat.

"We can actually see it," said Owen. "The energy, coming out of Suzie, through the glove, and into the rat."

Suzie gazed at the direct evidence of what Gwen had been saying. "Is that what you see?" she asked. "Is that what the world looks like to you?"

"A bit, yeah," said Gwen.

"So what should we do with it?" asked Tosh, looking at the glove.

"It's dangerous," said Gwen firmly. "The larger the creature you resurrect, the more dangerous for the operator. And if you tried to sustain something for too long, it would kill you. I don't know if you could ever get it to bring somebody back permanently, but if you did, it would certainly kill the operator."

"Might be useful if all you needed to do was ask someone a question, though," said Owen. "Y'know, like 'What killed you?' Or 'Did you see which way the giant, slavering, alien monster went?' That wouldn't take a minute."

"Both good points," said Jack, stuffing his hands in his pockets. "Secure storage, I think, to be brought out only if we really need it. Good work Suzie, Gwen, Owen." He took the glove gently from Suzie — she had to force herself not to hang onto it — and handed it to Ianto. "Lock it up. Any ideas for a name?"

Ianto tilted his head. "I was thinking … the Resurrection Gauntlet."

**Author's Note:**

> I guess I could come up with another way to kill off Suzie, but her relationship with Gwen is too interesting. I think I'll keep her around. And anyway, losing her, especially the way they did, really tore at Jack, and his life's hard enough as it is.


End file.
